Don't blink.<p>The finale of every sunset is green. Try to catch it, if you can. The story of the so-called green flash begins by answering this question: Why is the sky blue?<p>Sunlight contains every visible color, each with its own wavelength. Light travels as ripples, with crests and valleys; …

As the Large Hadron Collider at CERN continues probing the high-energy frontier of physics, a new feature of its greatest discovery so far has come into view<p>In high-energy particle collisions we study the smallest known constituents of matter. According to our best knowledge of physics, these …

Evaluating academic performance on the basis of journal publications is skewing research priorities. This does our public funders a disservice<p>Do universities generate banal, wasteful research through the relentless focus on publications as a performance indicator? It’s a question I began asking …

Scientists take their world- and life-changing work very seriously.<p>Whether it's charting the possible consequences of climate change, helping predict when we might die, or keeping tabs on nuclear weapons stockpiles, their work can take on a huge gravitas.<p>But we all need to unwind, and sometimes …

One of the oldest means of extracting potable liquid from seawater involves distillation, basically boiling the water into steam and then cooling the purified vapor in condensation tubes. Problem is, this method is incredibly power intensive with nearly half of the input energy going towards just …